As far as I see it, standard shots are you trying to hit a commonly vulnerable spot on the target; the head, heart, whatever. Called Shots are hasty aimed shots at a very specific and vulnerable spot; eyes, neck, etc. Aimed shots are you grabbing your gun with both hands, closing one eye, controlling your breathing, and lining up the shot until you have it.

Staging (noting that Called Shots give you a single free staging) determines how successful you are at hitting what you were going for. Target numbers determining how well you aimed; the better the aim, the lower the target number, the more successes you'll receive, the higher your staging.

All three of them rely on staging. Called Shots just give you a free stage in exchange for a crummy TN, and Aiming gives you a great TN and potential staging in exchange for time and personal risk.

Should be mentioned that trying to hit a vulnerable spot is a completely different thing in melee and ranged combat. In ranged combat, 999 times out of 1000, you're just trying to hit center-mass, or perhaps slightly above or below it -- because it's both easiest to hit and a very vulnerable location. A lot of successes can certainly be described as a head shot, but actually aiming for the head should be much less common than hitting the head (I don't think even Smartlink-2s would change that).

In melee, you're going for any of a number of vulnerable areas, depending on how the fight goes. My understanding is that, apart from a few special cases, you don't have a particular spot on the enemy in mind as you attack, you'll just hit where ever you get an opening. A lot of successes still means you got to hit a vulnerable spot and hit it well, but it doesn't have to mean you were actually going after that spot, or that you hit where you intended to.

However, no matter how you'd describe successes and staging in RL terms, staging damage up should certainly mean you hit a more vulnerable spot in most cases, or at least hit the same spot better, even if you don't Call a Shot or Take Aim.

Little question here: How does the reduced damage for the actual punch effect people with bone lacing?

With Titianium Bone Lacing, your unarmed attacks to (STR+4)M Stun damage, would that be reduced to (STR+3)M Stun damage or (STR-1)M Stun damage?

Bone Lacing damage in HTH (hand to Hand) is (Str+4)M Stun. This over rides the standard Unarmed (str-1)m Stun. Also with Titanium you can choose to do physical damage at (half STR+4)M

Just read bone lacing and it will tell you that unarmed is changed to the (STR+4)M Stun.


The next Issue.

So if I generate 4 Successes ove my apponent I can therefore raise the (X)S Stun damage accordingly. IE As per the Melee rules. Bearing in mind the Special rules from Stun weapons.
This is related to stun baton and Gloves.
So Glove proove to be superior to Batons.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was going for. Once you take weapons into the account, most spots will be worth a swing if openings aren't that available. You might not go after somebody's toes with a sword, but hands and fingers are just fine as a target if the opportunity presents itself, etc.

A good shot against someone's toes can seriously mess up their balance, not to mention being quite painful.

~J

Technically, since neither of them are modifiers (which is what they should have been) but are instead defined Damage Codes, the general rule of thumb is that you use the better of the two. Kind of like if you have two different Initiative boosts on you that aren't compatible.

Well, thats press that the initiative boost analogy a bit farther. Lets say someone, because that someone is a moron, has both wired reflexes 1 AND a level 2 synaptic accelerator implanted. Do they get the +2 to reaction from the WR1 as well as the +2d6 initiative from the syn accel? Or do they only get to pick which packaged bonus they recieve?

Like I said, the general rule of thumb is that you get the better of multiple bonuses when they don't expressely stack. In that case, you'd have Reaction +2, Initiative +2D6. The Synaptic Acclerator is doing nothing for the character's Reaction, but the Initiative boost is superior.

It's not the implant, but the statistic in question. In the case of Synaptic Accelerators and Wired Reflexes, however, I think they expressly state that those implants don't work together. In those cases, you choose which one you want to take advantage of at any given time (just like how you have multiple options available when using a skill; use your skill, default to another skill, default to an attribute; use whichever one grants you the best advantage).

Thus if you're just making an Initiative roll to see who goes first, your best bet is to use your Synaptic Accelerator (averaging +7 vs. the Wired Reflexes average of 5.5). But if you have to make a Reaction Test for Surprise, a Quick Draw, or whatever, you're better off with the Wired Reflexes bonus (+2 vs. +0).

Since Wired Reflexes and Synaptic Accelerator are incompatible, I would give the character problems for having both. Perhaps half the time he gets +2D6 and half the time he gets -2D6. That's incompatible.

I believe that most people would agree that counting successes twice, by staging up both the str-1M stun and the 7s stun damage with the same successes would be overpowering. Therefore any successes must be applied to one of the damage codes or divided among them in some way.

Therefore, the real question here is wether or not the 7s stun can be staged with successes at all. If you hit someone with 4 successes, being allowed to stage up the 7s stun would be the most efficient thing to do for most characters (except for trolls, or the aforementioned titanium bones).

However, since unarmed combat (or martial arts) is the skill being used here, I believe that the str-1Mstun is the damage code that should be staged, if positive staging were to be applied to the 7s stun, this would imply a hit in a location were shocks are the most effective (cattleprod to the neck etc.). However, the knowledge of, and skill to hit, areas that are vulnerable to electrical shocks is IMO not covered by the unarmed skill, therefore successes from an Unarmed skill test should not be used to stage up the 7s stun-
Besides, str-1M stun is the base damage code of the shock glove, while the 7s stun is described as being extra.

In short:
Str-1M is staged up by successes. 7s stun is flat, but can still be staged down by the targets body test. The extra penalties caused by stun weapons is based on the 7s stun only.

At least, this is how I GM.

I think the energizer bunny just died two posts back.
hmm...wow.

I have a question: How much damage would a troll be doing if he were smacking you with a shock glove on one hand and a stun baton in the other?

Depends on which one is determined to be his primary weapon. Whichever one it is, that's the damage code. The only change will be a higher Staging most likely.

If a Troll was smacking me with something, I don't think I'd care if it was a shock weapon. I think I'd be more worried about the broken bones